A closed and single-use system for monocyte enrichment: potential for dendritic cell generation for clinical applications.

Background: This study evaluated the ability of a modified cell separator (Cobe Spectra Apheresis) system to isolate monocytes (MOs) by elutriation. The evaluation was performed in two independent international laboratories. The capacity of collected MOs to differentiate into dendritic cells (DCs) was also assessed.

Treatment of osteonecrosis with autologous bone marrow grafting.

Core decompression with bone graft is used frequently in the treatment of osteonecrosis of the femoral head. Many different techniques have been described. In the current series, grafting was done with autologous bone marrow obtained from the iliac crest of patients operated on for osteonecrosis of the hip.

Dendritic cells for NK/LAK activation: rationale for multicellular immunotherapy in neuroblastoma patients.

Natural killer (NK)/lymphokine-activated killer (LAK) cell-based immunotherapy could be beneficial against major histocompatibility complex class I-negative tumor residual disease such as neuroblastoma (NB), provided that interleukin 2 (IL-2) or surrogate nontoxic NK cell stimulatory factors could sustain NK cell activation and survival in vivo. Here we show that human monocyte-derived dendritic cells (MD-DCs) promote potent NK/LAK effector functions and long-term survival, circumventing the need for IL-2. This study demonstrates (1) the feasibility of differentiating granulocyte colony-stimulating factor-mobilized hematopoietic peripheral blood stem cells (PBSCs) into high numbers of functional MD-DCs and NK/LAK cells in a series of 12 children with stage 4 neuroblastoma (NB); (2) potent DC-mediated NK cell activation in autologous settings; (3) the reciprocal capacity of NK/LAK cells to turn immature DCs into maturing cells electively capable of triggering NK cell functions; and (4) the unique capacity of maturing DCs to sustain NK cell survival, superior to that achieved in IL-2.